8 quake pandas arrive in Beijing for Olympics

Pride of China from the quake-hit Sichuan province airlifed in to add cheer

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Next story in China earthquake

Newly arrived giant pandas have a light moment at Beijing Zoo in Beijing on Saturday. Eight giant pandas from the quake-hit Sichuan province were airlifed in to add cheer to the upcoming Beijing Olympics.

BEIJING — Eight pandas arrived safely in Beijing on Saturday after a long journey from their damaged reserve near the epicenter of last week's China earthquake.

The pandas will spend the next six months at the Beijing Zoo on a special Olympics visit that was planned long before the quake.

The pandas have been closely watched because they seemed nervous after the earthquake, sometimes eating and sleeping less. But they appeared lively after they were moved into their exhibit space at the Beijing Zoo on Saturday evening, even putting their paws on the glass separating them from the media and the public.

"I'm not sure about the mental state of the pandas right now," Ye Mingxia of the Beijing Zoo told The Associated Press earlier this week. "We will have to carefully observe them after they arrive."

But Wang Pengyan, deputy head of the Wolong Giant Panda Reserve, assured the state-run Xinhua News Agency that the pandas were fine. "The pandas have recovered from any nervousness about the quake and are all in good condition," he said Saturday.

By Saturday, the quake had killed more than 60,000 people — including five staff members of the panda reserve.

Conditions remained so bad at the reserve this week that the Chinese government arranged an emergency shipment of about 5 tons of bamboo for the hungry pandas, almost 60 of them, at Wolong. Two pandas have been missing since the quake.

The panda is a powerful symbol of China, and the country engages in what's called "panda politics" by lending out the rare animal as a gesture of goodwill. Among the pandas found safe at Wolong after the quake were Tuantuan and Yuanyuan, two pandas that have been offered to Taiwan.

About 1,590 pandas are living in the wild, mostly in Sichuan and the western province of Shaanxi. An additional 180 have been bred in captivity.

The Wolong reserve is part of efforts to breed giant pandas in hopes of increasing the species' chances of survival.

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